Niklas Luhmann: System

Niklas Luhmann was German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist. Explore interesting quotes on system.
Niklas Luhmann: 24   quotes 3   likes

“The art system operates on its own terms, but an observer of art can choose many different distinctions to indicate what he observes.”

Niklas Luhmann

Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 102.

Art

“No matter how abstractly formulated are a general theory of systems, a general theory of evolution and a general theory of communication, all three theoretical components are necessary for the specifically sociological theory of society. They are mutually interdependent.”

Niklas Luhmann

Luhmann (1982) The Differentiation of Society, Translated by Stephen Holmes and Charles Larmore. Columbia University Press, New York, 1982, pp. 261. Cited in: Loet Leydesdorff (2000) " Luhmann, Habermas, and the Theory of Communication http://www.leydesdorff.net/montreal.htm".

Communication

“Does knowledge rest on construction in the sense that it only functions because the knowing system is operatively closed, therefore: because it can maintain no operative contact with the outside world; and because it therefore remains dependent, for everything that it constructs, on its own distinction between self-reference and allo-reference?”

Niklas Luhmann

Luhmann (1991) “Wie lassen sich latente Strukturen beobachten?,” in Paul Watzlawick, Peter Krieg (eds.), Das Auge des Betrachters: Beiträge zum Konstruktivismus. Festschrift für Heinz von Foerster, Piper, München-Zürich, p. 71; cited in: Heinz von Foerster (1993) " For Niklas Luhmann: “How Recursive is Communication?” http://e1020.pbworks.com/f/fulltext-2.pdf". Translated by Richard Howe.

World , Knowledge , Sense , Dependency

“By representing themselves as a system [the mass media ] generates boundaries with an inside and an outside that is inaccessible to them. They too reflect [or represent] their outside as public life, so long as specific external relationships, such as to politics or to the advertisers, are not in question.”

Niklas Luhmann

Source: The reality of the Mass Media (2000), p. 106 as cited in: John Downin (2004) The SAGE Handbook of Media Studies. p. 234.

Life , Question